IU to use $69 million from Lilly Endowment to achieve goals of excellence for law, music schools

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Indiana University President Michael McRobbie announced today (Dec. 12) that Lilly Endowment is giving the IU Foundation two major gifts, totaling $69 million, to secure the international standing of the IU Jacobs School of Music, provide its world-class music faculty and students with a state-of-the-art studio facility and propel the IU School of Law-Bloomington to the upper echelon of public university law schools.

The gifts comprise:

$44 million for the IU Jacobs School of Music to build and equip a new North Studio Building, which will provide technologically and acoustically superior teaching and practice facilities to rival any music school or conservatory in the world.

$25 million for the Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington for an initiative to attract and retain exceptional teachers and scholars and to establish the school as one of the very best public university law schools in the country.

A site plan of the IU Jacobs School of Music's planned North Studio Building, which will provide teaching and practice facilities to rival any music school or conservatory in the world.

"These extraordinary gifts will help secure the prominence of the music and law schools at IU Bloomington well into the 21st century," said McRobbie. "It will enable us to create an environment of excellence that honors the stature of our internationally renowned music faculty and further unlocks the potential of our first-rate students. It will also help us position our School of Law at the forefront of legal education by enabling the school to vigorously compete for the very best faculty and students from around the globe.

"We are deeply grateful to Lilly Endowment for these gifts and its continuing remarkable support of teaching and learning, scholarship, performance and research at Indiana University," McRobbie added.

The gifts follow similarly generous Lilly Endowment gifts to IU that have supported genomics, neuroscience and other life sciences research, scholarships for high-achieving Indiana students and arts and humanities initiatives.

The gift of $44 million is the largest ever received by IU to support the arts and the largest ever received by the Jacobs School of Music. Similarly, the gift of $25 million to the IU School of Law-Bloomington is the largest gift the school has ever received.

"Lilly Endowment is most pleased to be able to announce these grants for two very important schools at IU," said Sara B. Cobb, the Endowment's vice president for education.

"In the case of the Jacobs School of Music grant, we are grateful for the opportunity to help build on the long legacy of excellence supported over the years by the likes of Herman B Wells, Wilfred C. Bain, Charles Webb, the Jacobs family and its current dean, Gwyn Richards," she continued. "The new facilities funded by this grant will help secure the school's world-class status and enable its faculty to provide instruction at levels of quality consistent with that status.

"Likewise, we are enthused about Dean Robel's vision for the law school to achieve even higher levels of excellence and solidify its reputation among the finest law schools in the country. The grant will help enable the school to recruit and retain faculty and students of the highest quality."

The Jacobs School of Music's new North Studio Building will provide critical teaching, research and performing space to a faculty roster that the late Beverly Sills once described as "mind-boggling." It will house the academic activities of such musical luminaries as violinists Joshua Bell and Jaime Laredo, conductor Leonard Slatkin, pianist André Watts and soprano Sylvia McNair, each of whom has joined the school's faculty in the last three years.

Many of these musical talents spend their days working in the Music Annex, also known as "the round building," which was built in 1960 and has served as the primary practice facility for students and main studio space for faculty. The building, though, has become inadequate as the school's technological and logistical needs for teaching, learning, research and practice have increased.

The new North Studio Building will provide studio space with excellent acoustics and state-of-the-art wiring and technology, more and larger practice and rehearsal rooms, and advanced temperature and humidity controls, which are essential to preserving millions of dollars worth of musical instruments. Officials hope to have the new facility built and ready for use for the school's second century, beginning in 2010.

Gwyn Richards, dean of the Jacobs School, said the gift will secure the school's international preeminence, both now and in the future.

"The Jacobs School of Music North Studio Building will offer our world-class faculty members and talented students a technologically and acoustically superior environment for teaching, research and creative activity," Richards said. "The facility will rival that of any university or conservatory in the world. It will enhance collaboration among our students and faculty. It will allow us to continue to entice the best artists, scholars and composers to Bloomington."

Richards said the gift will build on the "transformational" naming gift of $40.6 million given to the school in November 2005 by David H. and Barbara B. Jacobs of Cleveland. The Jacobs' gift is supporting endowed scholarships, fellowships and faculty positions.

IU music students come to Bloomington from around the globe -- currently from all 50 states and 55 countries. The school's alumni, totaling nearly 14,000, is considered to be the largest of any music school in the country. Jacobs' alumni can be found in just about every major orchestra, choral ensemble and opera house in the U.S. as well as in countless performing ensembles around the world.

The School of Law-Bloomington has offered quality legal education for more than 150 years and is a recognized leader in many fields of legal scholarship, including the study of constitutional democracy, cybersecurity, criminal law and procedure, environmental law and intellectual property.

With the Lilly Endowment gift, the law school will be able to hire and retain world-class teachers and legal scholars who will make a significant impact on these and other fields.

Lauren Robel, dean of the IU School of Law-Bloomington and the Val Nolan Professor of Law, said the gift will transform the law school into one of the top public university law schools in the United States. It will enable the law school to fulfill its vision to be a highly influential law school that will advance knowledge, justice and the public good in the state, in the nation and around the world.

The law school's clinical programs, such as the Entrepreneurship Law Clinic, Community Legal Clinic, and Family and Children Mediation Clinic, are in step with some of the nation's best and provide students with on-the-job legal training. Students also benefit from an increasing roster of multidisciplinary centers that are engaged with some of the world's most critical issues. Those centers include the new Center for Constitutional Democracy in Plural Societies, led by renowned constitutional law scholar David Williams, and the Center for Applied Cybersecurity Research, directed by Distinguished Professor and information privacy authority Fred Cate.

"The school already attracts professors with passion, who have identified important problems and want to solve them, while engaging and inspiring students," Robel said. "With this gift, we will be able to hire and retain world-class teachers and legal scholars who will be leaders in their respective fields."

"This is an extraordinary and transformative gift for us, one that will assure that our students receive a legal education that is unrivaled in the country, and that will enable our graduates to continue to serve the state, the nation and the world in the highest and best traditions of the legal profession," she added.

About the Jacobs School of Music

The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music is universally acclaimed as one of the finest, if not the finest, schools of music in the world. It currently has more than 1,600 students who come from all 50 states and 55 countries, and 170 full-time and 23 part-time faculty members, including performers, scholars, composers, dancers and teachers of international renown. Its students choose from 35 degree programs and participate in more than 1,100 public performances each year, including seven full operas, three ballets and choral, band and orchestral concerts.

About the Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington

The Indiana University School of Law-Bloomington ranks among the top 15 public law schools in the nation and the top 20 percent of all accredited law schools nationwide. Half of the school's entering students are ranked, in terms of standardized test scores, among the top 9 percent of all law students in America. The school is a leader in many fields of legal scholarship, including the study of constitutional democracy, cybersecurity, criminal law and procedure, environmental law and intellectual property. More than half of its faculty members engage in research related to the effects of globalization on law and legal systems. The school has been recognized as being at the forefront of the current transformation of legal education prompted by the path-breaking recent report, "Educating Lawyers," from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.